I was the blocker

Every Sunday afternoon I sit down with one page and answer four questions.

I call it the Sunday Hour. It takes about an hour, sometimes less. You already have it, it came with the welcome email when you subscribed.

The four questions:

1. What are the three things that make this a good week?

2. What comes off the calendar?

3. Who is waiting on me?

4. The same pass on the house.

The first one is the easy one. Naming three priorities feels like planning and it produces a good feeling within about four minutes. The fourth one is housekeeping with a small twist, which I'll come back to.

Questions two and three are the ones I want to spend this issue on, because they're where the hour stops being pleasant and starts being useful. They're also the two I skipped for years without noticing.

What comes off the calendar

The line on the page is blunt on purpose. If nothing came off, you reviewed. You didn't plan.

Adding is easy. Every week arrives with more in it than the last one, and a plan that only adds is a list of intentions with a nicer font. The week doesn't get more hours because you made a list about it.

Last week I cut two things. A collaboration call with a partner, and a networking call with someone I'd been wanting to meet. Neither was optional in the sense of not mattering. Both were optional in the sense that the week already had four things in it that needed my best version, and these two would have gotten a worse one.

Here's the part that took me a long time to learn.

When I punt something, I don't punt it to “next week.” I punt it to a specific slot I know I can actually keep. Tuesday the 16th, 10am. Named, booked, done.

Vague deferral isn't rescheduling. It's the beginning of a drift, and I've watched things drift for two months that way, each week getting bumped a little further while the other person quietly concludes I'm not serious. The cost isn't the meeting. It's the relationship slowly learning that my yes doesn't mean much.

The note I send is short:

Three things are doing work in there. It's honest about why. It names a specific time instead of asking them to solve my calendar. And it says I'm holding the slot, which tells them this is a reschedule and not a soft no.

Two minutes to write. It protects the week and the relationship at the same time.

Who is waiting on me

This is the question I'd put first if I rebuilt the page today.

Most of what blocks a team sits in an inbox, waiting on someone who doesn't know they're the blocker. Not out of neglect. It just isn't visible from where they're standing. Your team can be stalled on a decision that would take you four minutes, and the only reason it hasn't happened is that nobody put it in front of you on a Sunday.

Last week a colleague was waiting on my feedback on a proposal. They needed it Monday morning.

Because I saw it on Sunday, I had options. I wrote back and asked whether end of day Monday would work instead. It would. Then I blocked early Monday morning to actually do the review, and sent it back by midday.

Under-promise, over-deliver. They got it ahead of the deadline they'd agreed to, and I got to do the review with a clear head rather than at 8am with three other things stacked behind it.

None of that is available if I find out Monday morning. By then I'm choosing between rushing the work and missing the deadline, and I'm negotiating from behind. The four-minute decision only stays four minutes if you see it early.

So the scan is: who has sent me something, who is holding a decision that's mine to make, who has a next step that starts with me. Then send those before Monday. Two minutes each. They buy back days, and most of them buy back somebody else's day rather than mine, which is the point.

The house gets the same pass

The fourth question runs the same scan on home. What has to get bought, built, or handled before Thursday, so it doesn't get handled at 9pm on Wednesday.

I'll be honest that I run this one less rigorously than the other three, and I'm still working out what it should look like. What I know is that leaving it off the page entirely was a mistake. The week doesn't distinguish between a client deliverable and an empty fridge. Both of them will find you on Wednesday night.

Try this week

Before your week starts, take one pass at question two.

Look at the calendar and find the thing that comes off. Not the thing you wish would come off. The thing that will get a worse version of you than it deserves, and would be better served by a different week.

Then move it to a named slot and send the note.

If nothing comes off, look again. Or accept that you reviewed the week instead of planning it, which is a fine thing to have done as long as you know that's what it was.

What's one advantage you could compound from here?

Hit reply and tell me. I read everything, and what you send shapes what I write next.

— Austin

Austin Stevenson is Chief Revenue Officer at ACT LAB and a co-founder of Vertosa. He writes Compound Advantage on his own time.